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We walked a few minutes to discover the Abasar pandal – this was the first pandal where we saw a separate entrance called ‘jury entrance’. The top pandals are announced every year, and this adds to the competitive spirit between the organizations. The regular queue for visitors had a few people in line, but it wasn’t too long; was just a short wait. And there were some uniquely decorated lamps outside the pandal that kept Aaron busy with his photo shots. This was the first one where we saw a moving contraption that was part of the decoration outside the pandal. The lighting and colours gave a different feel to this pandal as we stepped into a beautiful corridor. The backdrop of the Goddess was cottony (literally filled with cotton fluffs) while the Goddess looked serene – the photo definitely doesn’t do justice to what we actually saw. The fluffy cotton added to the serenity. The organizers had to keep asking folks to move along – similar to what happens in crowded temples.
Walking out of Abasar, we stumbled into another pandal where there was no queue, and so we just walked straight in to be welcomed by the Goddess here with a large head.

(click on the images to view a larger version)

Kshitij, in his list of places, had suggested checking out the Olypub in Park Street. Since it was 7:25 pm, we thought of getting something to eat over there – and Park Street had a metro station. Since we were close to another metro station, we decided to try this mode of transportation. The metro was a bit crowded, and the train was packed to an extent – we still had some breathing space while standing, and the AC was working really well – despite the crowd, it felt cool inside. Took us about 20 minutes to get to Park Street – a lively street. Instead of the pub, we decided to go to the Peter Cat restaurant. It had a small entrance on the side road, but there were many people crowded outside – 8 pm was definitely a bad time to be at a restaurant and that too during the festival time.

Thanks to Google Maps, we found a top-rated place for rolls – later, Kshitij also mentioned the same name – Kusum rolls. Had a couple of egg rolls – it’s not a restaurant; more like a roadside shop; you order, get the food and either have it outside on the road or take it home. I’d never seen a menu with so many rolls – from egg to chicken to mutton to different combos of them. It was tasty; would have been nice to have been able to sit and eat leisurely!

The next stop was Mohd Ali Park’s pandal because that was also further down the same metro line we took. But while in the metro, Deb suggested holding off on this one because he said we could do it with him another day. And so we didn’t even step out of the metro station and took the metro in the opposite direction to get back to Park Street, where we hoped to have dinner. Peter Cat was still ruled out due to the crowd, but there was a tempting cafe we had seen near Peter Cat, and that’s where we landed at 9:30 pm. A place called Flurry’s Bakery – no waiting queue outside!

We learnt from Deb that this was a high-level English tea shop. Many shops on Park Street existed in the pre-independence years, and Flurry’s was also one of them – a tearoom started in 1922. We ordered their tea, which came in a typical English teapot, and a chef’s special fusion dish – fish surrounded by pasta and cheese all over, topped with plenty of mustard and a bun as a side. Mustard was a common ingredient in a lot of Bengali dishes. The dish was good but a bit salty. Since they also had a bakery, we tried a couple of items there. This was probably one of the few restaurants during the Puja time which was not crowded – their items are on the pricier side, but the ambience was good – a nice place to catch up with friends.

We spent close to an hour in the cafe, and during the break, we were also planning our next stop based on Kshitij’s inputs. I did see that the metro line went to Kalighat, and there was a Kalighat Temple which seemed like a major landmark in the city. Kshitij said it wouldn’t be open at night, and the neighbouring areas are shady, which we would be better off avoiding. And so we decided to head to Suruchi Sangha Club – supposed to have grand pandals rated among Kolkata’s top pandals every year. But this didn’t have any metro station nearby and was about 20 km from Park Street.

We took the metro to the last stop and walked it out through the alleys of Kolkata – though you have Google assisting you, it does feel reassuring when you have a few other people also walking in the same direction! We reached a crowded area and then just followed the winding queue to get to the Suruchi pandal.

We walked through a few side lanes to get to the restaurant but found ourselves returning to the pandal area when we realized we were taking a wrong turn. The pandal area was swarmed by a large crowd now, and we could sense the increased pedestrian traffic even on other streets. We found our way to the Bhojohori Manna restaurant at 1 pm (the board said ‘Bengali home style cuisine’). Deb had said that it was likely we’d have to wait for 30 minutes at least but fortunately for us, there was not much of a waiting crowd – a table for two was readily available, and the waiter guided us to it.

Deb had given us recommendations on what to have – the thali (a set meal), at least one mutton dish, illish bhapa (fish), mutton kosha, daab chingri (prawn) which is cooked in coconut. And so we went with the thali along with the fish and prawn dishes. The Bengali thali had a cup of white rice, a cup of ghee rice with some nuts (a form of light pulao/pilau), dal, shukto (a mixed vegetable gravy which uses a little milk for the dish), a couple of vegetable dishes (one dry and one gravy based), a large begun bhaja (marinated brinjal/eggplant slice that is cooked in oil). I loved all the gravies; they were flavourful but not spicy hot – and tasted delicious with rice. The same was the case with the fish and prawn dishes too. And dessert in the thali consisted of the mishti doi and another sweet.

(You can click on the snaps to see the larger version)

When we left the restaurant, there was a huge queue waiting to enter; we were lucky that we came 30 minutes earlier. Per the itinerary, we were supposed to take a bus to Jodhpur Park for the pandal there. But having been out on the streets for about 5 hours on such a hot and humid day, we decided to head back to the hotel for a break. We waded through the crowds to make it to the main road; one challenge with Uber/Ola was that we found the fares were high for short rides – possibly because of the festive period. Finding the share-auto route took us a while, and we had to switch two to get back to the Circus Maidan.

Double booking

Another friend of mine, Kshitij, had warned that 5 pm to 2 am is the peak time zone in the city; we were curious to see what it would be like. At about 5 pm we searched for Ubers/Olas but couldn’t get anything. He had told us that the cabs won’t take us to the pandals, but the apps said there were no taxis available at this hour. Considering the distance of 3.5 km, we decided to walk it out to Maddox square park (this was on Kshitij’s list).

We avoided the main road because of the traffic and noise and stuck to the side lanes. By 5:40 pm, the sun was out, and it turned dark; there were stretches of road that we passed which were deserted and made us wonder if we were on the right path because we didn’t see the type of decoration we saw near the pandals. And we were surprised to suddenly see skyscrapers – some of which were still not occupied but up until this point, we had only seen buildings with 2 or 3 floors.

We finally did see a board indicating the direction to the park. Took us 45 minutes. Maddox Park seemed like a college hangout spot – many youngsters in small groups chatting and enjoying the food from the stalls in the park. We also bought some snacks and sat down for a bit of rest. The Maddox pandal was relatively simpler than the grander ones we saw in the afternoon.

By 6:10 pm, we were on our way to check our next accommodation spot – we couldn’t get continuous accommodation for all days in the same hotel and had to break it up – our 2nd place of stay was a backpacker’s hostel near Maddox Square. It was kind of hidden from view – the road was pretty dark as well, and it took a while for us to locate the road and then some time to find the shady back entrance; we took the steps up since there was nothing below – on each level there were a few rooms, and there was also a large dog loitering around the hostel which we had to evade. We finally found the hostel’s owner – he was a great host; he took us to the terrace, where we chatted and discovered to our shock, that we didn’t really have rooms! Apparently, the booking aggregator company had made a double booking in this place – fortunate for us that we visited the area early. The other folks with the overlapping booking had already confirmed checking in – their stay was longer than ours. There wasn’t much we could do for now – had to find another place to stay. As we departed, the host mentioned a couple of other places in the locality to check out while we explored Kolkata.

Day 2 continued…

As per the plan, we were supposed to head for lunch to a restaurant nearby, but it was only 10:15 am; we had at least a couple of hours before they would open. We could return to the hotel but decided to explore the place instead of sitting in our hotel room. We searched Google maps for a place to beat the heat and while away some time. The ideal spot seemed to be a park with a lake, 1 km away. On the way, we bought a couple of water bottles to quench our thirst. The neighbourhood near the park was quiet; it took us a while to find the entrance amidst the fencing around the park – this was a pretty huge park within the city. There were plenty of trees and also benches near many of them. The lake, the Rabindra Sarovar Lake, was pretty large, and the park enclosed the lake. Aaron spent the time capturing scenic views.

(Note: you can click on any image in the blog to view the larger image)

There were only a handful of people at this hour – can imagine it being crowded in the morning because this was a perfect place for morning walks. We walked through the trails – most had complete tree cover shielding us from the sun. A board said there were free meditation classes every morning at 6 am; another board said the laughing club operated at 6:15 am, and everyone was welcome to join.

We headed back towards the Gariahat area to get to the restaurant Deb had recommended for lunch. But on the way, we noticed a decorated archway and opted to detour through this path to see what pandal it would lead us to. It was the BCA (Ballygunge cultural association) pandal. This one had a rundown setup – outside the pandal, up in the sky, there were plenty of clotheslines strung parallel to each other on which white clothes were hanging, as if for drying. The exterior of the pandal was made of wooden planks and rusted metallic sheets stuck together. Inside the pandal, it was a dark setting with rows and rows of metal bins stacked on the sides like walls of the house; the soft music running in the background made for a great experience.

The centre of attraction was where the light source was, around Goddess Durga, with her 10 arms, standing atop the slayed demon who lay on his back. I’m sure that to create such a low-key-looking setup would have been a painstaking task – the end result was really impressive. Seeing the clothes, the homely setting inside with items typically found in a home, clothes stacked on shelves behind the Goddess, the abundance of bins etc., we could guess that there was some theme though we didn’t know exactly what it was; but even without knowing, you’d find the artwork impressive.

When we exited the BCA pandal, we were in a street filled with bamboo artefacts and huge bamboo figures. I later found that the theme of this pandal was based on ‘jugalbandhi’ (meaning ‘entwined twins’) – they had used a mix of modern materials (like steel, iron etc.) and traditional materials (like bamboo). Every pandal had a story to tell!

It was 12:10 pm when we came out onto the main road. On the way to the restaurant, we noticed another archway – lunch was waiting, but we decided to check out this pandal as well – the Tridhara pandal. We had heard stories of how places would be packed in Durga puja times – but so far, the crowds we saw in the pandals were light, and this was the first day of Durga puja. Just near the entrance to this pandal, there was a lounge, but it was closed.

The Goddess in red

This pandal wasn’t in an enclosure; instead, it was on the road itself. The minute we entered, we were struck by the red hue, the contrasting colors of red on the stage, and umpteen white lotuses below. On the right side, in the background, were portraits of different women constructed of what seemed like small mirrors. At the centre was a red lotus, and in the middle of that was the Goddess holding a trident with all ten hands – the trident is what was used to slay the demon. Down below were sculptures of her four children, who were much smaller in size, but all of them were sculpted in a similar style to blend with the shape of the lotus. The 4 children were Lakshmi (the God of wealth), Saraswati (the God of knowledge), Ganesha (the elephant-faced God – remover of obstacles) and Kartikeya (the God of war). These are the 4 Gods we see in all other pandals as well – just that in each pandal, the design is different per the theme.

The top of the pandal glittered in the dangling red and white coloured artwork – it was hard to figure out how they created so much work on the top because there was no solid ceiling – in fact, you could even see the sky through the gaps.

The Durga in the red lotus with the lighting effect inside the lotus was dazzling. The backdrop was such that from one side, you would see the faces of different women, but as you moved further down the road, you would see the face of the Goddess appearing in each spot where there was a woman’s face – it was like a dual portrait; perhaps to symbolize that the Goddess was present in everyone.

From different positions in the pandal, the lighting felt different due to the use of mirrors and glass strips. Below the Goddess, within the white lotuses, there were a few large bird cages.

The theme for this pandal was perception, and just like viewing art, different people would interpret the meaning of the various elements in this pandal differently – dedication to women, confinement by society, discovering the strength within, oneness, freedom etc.

The crowd had picked up while we were in the middle of the pandal; we were shoulder to shoulder with people and let the crowd nudge us along – if not for the crowd, we’d definitely have spent more time simply standing and admiring the work; such was the splendour.

Day 2 continued…

We took a lane from the main road and landed up in a posh area of Gariahat; along the street heading to our destination, on either side, there were plenty of stalls (many were food stalls) – but most were closed. We really didn’t know what to expect at our destination – the Ekdalia evergreen club. “What would be there in a club? Is it just all these stalls together in a single place along with a pandal like the one we saw in the Circus Maidan park?”

The road with stalls led us to a smaller lane which had banners on all sides – they had constructed archways with hoardings. And in this tunnel of hoardings, there were lots of people – plenty of pedestrians and even in this, somehow, cars found space to motor along!

The lane led us to a large structure which resembled a temple but was a makeshift structure; it was very colourful and had plenty of intricate artwork – from the pillars to the dome, it looked grand.

We stepped inside the structure, and the first thing that caught our attention was the huge chandelier in the center that lit the place in an orange hue. It was grand, but what was grander were the 5 large sculptures on stage with goddess Durga in the center – all of them glittering in gold. In front of Durga was a lion engaged in battle with a demon that had a serpent around him.

There was a decent amount of crowd inside, but when you looked at the deity, you just forgot about the people around you. It was the same type of feeling that I used to have when seeing large Buddha statues in art museums or temples – a sort of meditative state of calmness – a quiet state of awe.

My initial skepticism about seeing pandals disappeared; I was now looking forward to seeing more of them!

I later leant that the Ekdalia club pandal was based on the Jatoli Shiv Temple in Himachal Pradesh – compare the photos of the actual temple vs the snap of the pandal, and you’ll realize how much attention to detail the artisans have paid.

(Click on the images below to view the full size)

Pandals – big and small

We exited the pandal through a side entrance, and the lane we landed in was also lined with plenty of stalls, including a Hershey’s stall, but all were closed. This lane was also decorated on the top, and as usual, there were plenty of banners around. We guessed that the set-up was such that all the streets leading to the main pandal were decorated with archways – so if you stepped into an archway, you knew it would lead you to a pandal.

There were smaller pandals in some side lanes as well, but these lanes had very little decoration than those leading to the main ones. We did step into a few of these smaller pandals – seemed like they were constructed by smaller housing associations in the neighbourhood. There were no crowds here, and you could even sit inside if you wanted to.

By 10 am, we exited the Ekdalia neighbourhood. We noticed some overhead decoration on the opposite side of the road and followed the decorated lane. Should lead us to a pandal was our guess. And it did – we landed in the Singhi Park Sarbojanin pandal, also a destination in Deb’s itinerary. This one had wooden sculptures for the Gods; the demon here was in agony under the foot of the goddess, and the lion sporting a ferocious look – it surely knew that it was close to vanquishing the demon.

Exiting the pandal, we landed on the Hindustan Road, which also had the overhead decoration, and we followed along to reach the Hindustan Club pandal – the last pandal on Deb’s list before lunch. The entrance to this pandal was unique – hundreds of painted inverted pots arranged in the shape of a large mushroom. It was very thoughtful of the organizers to have kept a fan at the entrance of the pandal, providing much needed relief on a bright sunny day.

The goddess Durga here was a picture of calmness sporting a faint smile; unlike the other pandals we had seen so far, the other 4 Gods here were much smaller. Durga was seated on a lion, and the lion itself was pretty much trampling a buffalo that was flat on the floor. Wondering why a buffalo? It’s because the demon was Mahishasura (a buffalo demon; asura is the word used for demons, and mahisha in Sanskrit means buffalo).
Aaron took many shots of the mushroom from various angles and distances with different camera settings.

We exited the pandal and headed further down Hindustan road; we noticed a poor couple sleeping on the footpath while their kid was playing near them, running around the parked vehicles. A little further down the lane was another couple huddled together on the footpath in front of a coal-fired stove boiling potatoes. Quite a contrast, considering the fact that just a few meters away was a large pandal which must have cost a lot to build.

Day 1 night…

We crossed a mall, the Quest Mall, on the way, but that was also closed as expected since it was midnight – the building had a unique design, and Aaron, who was interested in photography, immediately started clicking snaps from different viewpoints. On the other side of the road, we spotted two restaurants – as per reviews, the 2nd one was supposed to be better, but as we walked past the first one, we had a couple of guys at the door trying to direct us into their restaurant. We ignored their words and dodged past them, and we were thankful that there were cops a few metres ahead of us.

The restaurant was large, with a couple of floors, and we were surprised to see families with small kids dining at this hour. This was probably because of the festival season.
We ordered rotis and a non-veg gravy; the roti here was slightly different – bigger but soft. Looking around at the other tables, seemed like this place was popular for their biryanis.

We picked up a few toiletries from a shop on our return to the hotel. We also had tea from a tea stall that was serving it in small matkas (clay cups); they had 2 sizes, and the small one was really tiny! The matkas are disposable, and since they were biodegradable, I guess no one bothered about all the broken matkas in front of the stall.

Our hotel was opposite a park which, as per the map, was called the ‘Park Circus Maidan’. Something to check out in the daytime.

My friend, Deb (a native of Kolkata), had messaged a lengthy day 2 timetable for us. It was 2 am when we hit bed; and I slept like a log.

Day 2 – Friday (Sasthi)

We woke up at 8 am. As per Deb’s plan, we were supposed to be at our first destination at 6:30! We had a quick breakfast at our hotel. This was a budget hotel, so not the place where you expect to see a plethora of options – there were parathas, cornflakes and eggs. Was sufficient for us to start the day.

As per the plan, the second spot for the day was the park near the hotel – so we decided to start there. Deb said there would be a puja (prayer session) in the Circus Maidan park. The first thing we saw when stepping inside was the pandal within a large tent – decoration work was still underway. There was a priest around, but we’d likely missed the puja or maybe it was happening later in the day. Deb said that usually in the pandals, there is a puja in the morning and aarti (a ceremony with lamps) in the evening. Didn’t seem like anything else was happening in the park in the morning and so we headed to our next spot which wasn’t a part of Deb’s list.

A sweet start

Kolkata is known for its sweets, so we wanted to hit a sweet shop in the morning; we found one on Google with decent reviews and within walking distance. The shop was named ‘Mithai’ (which in Hindi means sweets!), and we again passed by the Quest Mall on the way. We indulged in some rasgullas (you have different variations of the rasgulla) – soft that you could cut through it with a spoon, unlike the ones we tend to find in South India, where it generally tends to be spongy and rubbery. We also had the sandesh (or Shondesh) – this is a milk-based sweet, but it is pretty dry compared to the rasgulla, which is juicy because of the syrup it is soaked in. There are flavoured ones as well like chocolate, mango etc. This was my first time tasting the sandesh, and I didn’t like the taste as much. Rasmalai is one of my favourite sweets (again a milk-based sweet which is served with the milk), and we had a piece of that as well – we also noticed that there was a sweet that was being made while we were there in the shop and in large quantities – the mishti doi – it’s like a version of sweet curd. Definitely worth trying out the sweets to find which ones you like – there’s also a lot of difference you’ll notice between sweet shops. While I didn’t enjoy the sandesh from this shop, I did like the sandesh in another shop that we visited later in our trip.

After having all those sweets, we definitely weren’t up for walking any further! Deb’s timetable told us to take an Uber or Ola. The Mithai shop was on the corner of the main road; we went to the other side and hoped to flag down an auto-rickshaw (we call it an ‘auto’ – a motorized 3-wheeler) – it’s an interesting experience to travel using multiple modes of transportation in a new city. An auto immediately stopped near us, and we told the driver our destination – Gariahat. He just told us to get in; we wondered, “Isn’t there some fare negotiation?” and asked him the rate. He said ten Rupees; it was a surprise, and I wondered if we heard him right – ‘surely can’t be that cheap’. But the guy just kept saying ‘get in, get in’ since he wanted to get past the traffic signal when it was green. We both got in but kept looking at the map and the road to see that we were really going in the right direction. After a couple of minutes, the auto stopped and waited for other passengers; that’s when we realized this was a share auto! And it so happened that this share auto was actually going to our place; the auto dropped us under a flyover in Gariahat, and the driver directed us to take the left lane.

During the auto ride, we saw the Birla Mandir – a famous temple built in a few Indian cities – wasn’t part of our destinations on this trip, but the white marble construction was a sight to behold even from the auto.

A long due trip about which I hadn’t blogged; so here goes – these were in pre Covid days!

The metro ride to the airport is fairly predictable; we have a train every 5 minutes, and it takes about 20 minutes to get there – no need to worry about traffic.

The security queue in the airport was pretty long, and some of the directions were confusing; the boards said you have to put your mobile phones on the tray, but the security personnel near the conveyor belt kept repeating in Hindi, ‘keep your mobile phones in the bag’. For whatever reason, we always had North Indian security forces posted in the Chennai airport.
I met Aaron on the other side of the security check. We wouldn’t get any dinner in the flight, and so we opted for chicken momos in the airport – it was pretty spicy and pretty expensive as well; the prices seemed competitive with the food prices within the flight – only difference is that you won’t have any choice on the flight.

Panchami – day 1

Neither of us had check-in baggage since this was just a 4-day trip. So we headed directly to the Kolkata airport exit; Aaron started searching for taxis on Uber and Ola.
“380,” he said.
“Let’s just check if there are any government taxis there.”
There were a few shops near the exit, unlike the Chennai airport, where there was barely anything. I spotted a counter for AC taxis.
“1200,” the staff said after we told him our destination was near the Park Circus Maidan.
“480,” Aaron said.
“It’s going up!”
“520”
“Wow.”
The Uber and Ola rates shot up to Rs. 600 within a few minutes. There was also an Ola counter within the airport where we enquired about the Ola pickup point.
When the Ola price came down to the 400s, Aaron booked a cab. After that, we noticed a long queue for taxis at another counter at the far end of the airport – this was probably the more affordable Government priced taxi stand, judging by the queue. But we stuck with the Ola booking since our cab was already on the way towards us.

When we stepped out of the airport, we were welcomed by a large digital screen with a photo of the Chief Minister (CM) of West Bengal. There were plenty of posters featuring her. And just like in most other Indian cities, we were also welcomed by the honking. On the road, we saw plenty of yellow-coloured taxis (the Ambassador taxis) – it’s been a while since I saw so many of them. It didn’t feel like it was 10:15 pm because there were plenty of people in the airport and lots of taxis plying.

During the taxi ride, we saw plenty of advertisements featuring Sourav Ganguly endorsing many products, and his popularity based on the number of posters in the city was second to the CM. We also noticed that some side roads were lit by decorative lights. We could spot at the end of some of these streets what are called ‘pandals’. A pandal is a small makeshift stage on which they keep sculptures or statues. On all the pandals, we saw sculptures of the goddess Durga along with a few other gods beside her on either side. We noticed these pandals on many streets, and they all looked very similar. I wondered if the festival was just about having many of these types of pandals all over the city. Perhaps I was judging too soon because we were viewing the pandals from very far away – maybe there was more to it than what we were witnessing at this hour?

The further we went from the airport, the more the number of hoardings. There were junctions where hoardings rose high enough to conceal the first floor of the building behind them! There were massive banners on the hoardings; for a long stretch, you would see the same banner repeated one after the other – ensuring that there was no way you would miss the company being featured on it! I felt uncomfortable seeing so many hoardings because it was only recently that we had a tragedy in Chennai where a hoarding collapsed on a 2-wheel rider leading to a fatal accident. I wondered if all these hoardings were just for the Durga puja festival or whether these always existed. One difference from Chennai though was that there weren’t many two-wheelers to be seen on the roads.

Our hotel (a Treebo outlet) gave us a cosy room with wooden panels; it felt like a room in a cottage. The first thing I do in a hotel is to check out the bathroom, and this one was clean, lengthy and spacious. We dumped our luggage and headed out for a walk; we also wanted to get something for dinner, but on the taxi ride, we noticed that restaurants were closed. It was close to midnight, so we wondered if we’d get anything. But Google said there were a few restaurants open till 4 am; so we followed Google.
We passed a bridge below which were parked buses and police vehicles – they were in an awful state; seemed abandoned, and I hoped that they weren’t in use. As we neared a traffic junction, we saw police volunteers in dark navy blue uniforms – for this hour in the night, we did spot a lot of cops on our walking trail. Their presence was definitely comforting – I wondered if this was usually the case or was it just because of the festival season that there were so many around.